Haunted Lafayette Cemetery #1
New Orleanians have a very unique way of burying the dead; above the ground. These above ground actually work as natural cremation. The tombs become unfathomably hot especially in the hot, humid New Orleans’ summers. It takes about a year after which all soft tissue has decomposed. There will of course be bone. It takes much longer to decompose but not there is nothing left but bones and dust. This can be removed from the coffin and dumped into a chamber in the back of the tomb. The burial space can then be used for another coffin. This type of burial was very efficient particularly during the yellow fever epidemics when people died by the thousands. :Yellow fever at the time was very mysterious. European and American doctors had no knowledge of tropical medicine. It was not until much later that they would figure out the cause of these ravenous epidemics that devoured the city each spring. The worst of which was in 1853.
During the 1800’s in New Orleans, gutters were filled with garbage and human waste. Rain would carry the filth throughout the streets causing malaria and cholera. Due to this, no one in the American sector would drink the river water, instead they used the cisterns. Unbeknown to them, they were drinking water that mosquitoes used for breeding, literally ingesting yellow fever carrying larvae! These plagues were similar to the black plague of Europe in the middle ages.
By May, 1853, it had been six years since the last case of yellow fever was found in the city. On May 28 of that year, the newspaper announced that New Orleans was disease free. Little did they realize that they had spoken too soon. On that very evening, an Irish immigrant was admitted to Charity Hospital vomiting up black matter. He was dead within hours. By June, 50,000 of the 150,000 population had evacuated the city to avoid the epidemic. Of the remaining 100,000, one in ten died from the fever. By the middle of July, the death toll was up to 429. More survivors began to flee the city carrying the disease throughout the Gulf Coast.
On August 20 alone, 269 people died. By this time, people were dying at the rate of 200 per day. In some homes, entire families would die within hours of each other leaving no one to make funeral arrangements. Inside Lafayette Cemetery, swollen, decaying bodies were stacked 50 at a time. Our above ground tombs were not enough, bodies had to be buried in shallow graves inside the cemetery, covered with no more than 14 inches of mud. Rain would wash away the soil exposing grotesque rotting bodies. All in all, 10,000 people died that summer. It wasn’t until 1900 when the cause of yellow fever was discovered. In 1964, the federal government started a million dollar program to destroy particular breed of mosquito responsible for yellow fever.
The lost souls of the yellow fever epidemic of 1853 still wander the grounds of Lafayette Cemetery. Some can be seen in the wee hours roaming the streets and gardens in search of “home.” But when the sunrises, their spectral figures fade into the light. The call out to passers-by but no one hears their woeful cries. They reach out for help only have the living who are rushing by walk right through them. Many of those who died suddenly from the disease did not have time to even realize that they were dead. There were no funerals. There were no good-bye’s. Never did they find closure. Never can they rest in peace.
Kalila Smith, excerpt from New Orleans Ghosts, Voodoo, & Vampires, 1997